Tuesday, January 18, 2011

And now, over to you

No mo Joe?: Word on the street is Joe Lieberman might not throw his hat into the ring next time around. Bummed?

Done deal: The FCC approved the Comcast-NBC merger. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont tweets: "The mega-merger of Comcast-NBC will lead to less local news coverage, fewer points of view, & reduced competition for viewers & ads."

Deal with it: Bill Frist says the health care bill is the law of the land and Republicans should build on it rather than try to symbolically tear it down.

Hayes Carll gave the crowd a good show in Little Rock last night.

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State Auditor Andrea Lea, who began her tenure in statewide office with a degree of competence unseen in some other Republican counterparts (think Treasurer Dennis Milligan particularly), is becoming more deeply mired in a political scandal.

The latest effort to undo Obamacare, the Graham-Cassidy legislation, would shift federal support for health coverage to a block grant system to the states. Bad news for Arkansas.

Great piece in Washington Post on the budget crisis in Louisiana. Big tax cuts and corporate welfare will do that to a state, particularly to a state whose previous governor, Republican Bobby Jindal, refused to join the Obamacare-funded Medicaid expansion. There's a lesson there for Arkansas.

In which I fix an overlooked speaker in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's coverage of the observance of the 60th anniversary of Central High School desegregation

Diane Ravitch, a powerful voice against the billionaires trying to replace an egalitarian public education system with a fractured system of winners and losers segregated by race and income in private or privately operated schools, is giving a shoutout to Barclay Key of Little Rock for his review of Little Rock 60 years after the school crisis.